在古典民主理論中假設：公民擁有豐富的政治知識以作爲其對政 治事務判斷的基礎，但是根據實證研究結果可以發現，現實世界中， 並不是每個公民對政治均有一定程度的瞭解，也並不是每個公民的政 治知識均很高。然而，無可否認的，一個國家的公民對於政治事務有 基本的瞭解，是促進其民主政治的基石。本文的研究發現，近年來台 灣選民政治知識单有提昇的趨勢，同時，影響台灣民衆政治知識的來 源因素包括：敎育年數、性別、閱讀報紙的頻次以及對於選舉的興 趣，這些變數均顯著影響一個人政治知識的高低。此外，政治知識低 的民衆也比政治知識高的民衆在選舉參與活動上少。

Classical democratic theory hypothesizes that good citizens should have highly interests in politics, be rational, and hold their own opinion in each issue or public affairs. But in the real political world, political scientists were depressed by empirical findings that people know very little about politics. However, it is very important for maintaining a democratic system that individuals are familiar with the process of political institutions, and have essential knowledge in political affairs. In this paper, we demonstrated that political knowledge among the electorate in Taiwan did increase. There are nearly 25% know nothing at all in 1992 on political factual questions, but there are only 5% did in 2000. Meanwhile, the level of political knowledge also affects one's response on political attitude questions obviously. The low informed inclined to express they did not hold any opinions on the questions. Besides, in our models, education, sex, the span of reading newspaper, and the span of watching television have significant influence on the level of public political knowledge. Male, better education, and spent much time in reading newspapers will be more informed. Informed voters also tend to participate more.